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How to setup and configure Lightberry HD with Hyperion & HyperCon

I recently purchased a Lightberry HD so that I could get the cool ambiilight colours with my TV. Despite there being information on the internet about how to set everything up, the information is fractured, brief, confusing, and a lot of times out of date. This guide aims to walk you through everything you need in regards to pre-purchasing, physically setting up, and finally configuring the software (Hyperion) to get the best from your Lightberry. If you are just simply looking for a quick review about the Lightberry HD, then golly gosh, I have one just here for you 🙂

Picture taken from Lightberry.eu

This guide is pretty long, so I have created a little table of contents to help you jump ahead to anything…

1) What to buy/What do I need?

Exactly what you need will depend on what you want to achieve and your current home theatre and TV setup. I’ll run through the absolute must haves to actually get things working, and then we’ll talk about the different types of Lightberry kits which can be used depending on if you want standard 1080p video or if you are a cutting edge 4K viewer. If you already have all the kit then you can jump ahead to the setup part of this tutorial.

Raspberry Pi 3:

The Raspberry PI is basically a credit card sized computer, and this little guy is going to be doing all the processing of your picture to then send the information to the LEDS and make them light up all pretty like. The PI 3 is a quad core 1.2ghz computer which will run flavours of Linux from a micro SD, it has 4 USB ports along with a HDMI port to connect to your TV, and thankfully the model 3 does have onboard Wifi. You can buy the Raspberry Pi 3 direct from Amazon.

If you already have a Raspberry Pi, then you can use that, but the Pi 3 – model B ensures you have enough computing power to light the LEDs as smooth as butter.

Raspberry Pi 3 Power Supply:

Raspberry Pi 3 Case:

It’s probably a decent idea to get a case for the Pi 3, just make sure that you put the Pi into the case WITHOUT the Micro SD card inserted, else it will snap. I went with this case that fits perfectly, again from Amazon.

Lightberry HD Kit:

Lightberry HD Kit

Lightberry HDMI Grabber

Lightberry LED controller

If the Raspberry Pi is the brains of this operation, this Lightberry HD kit is the heart. This kit includes everything that you need to get up and running (except the parts listed beforehand), the components of the kit are…

HDMI Grabber (2nd image above) – This is a smallish box which takes the input from a HDMi cable and then passes it to the Raspberry PI via USB. It also has a HDMI out port so that the image from your HDMI source can still be passed through to the TV. It also includes a physical switch to well, switch the HDMI between PAL and NTSC formats.

Lightberry LED Controller AKA level converter (3rd image above) – This is another little box that connects to the Raspberry PI via USB (or GPIO pinout) and also to the LED lighting strip. This box, as you can probably guess, takes the data that the Pi has analysed and turns it into signals that are sent to the LED strip to light up your world.

LED Lighting strip – The model of this lighting strip is APA102 (this is important to note later), and comes in 4meter and 5meter versions. For my 55″ TV I have the 5M version which resulted in a bunch of extra LEDs, but that’s cool as we will configure it so that they are simply always turned off. Also note that the 5M version requires power from the start of the strip and also from the end, whilst the 4M version only requires power from the start of the strip, the 4m version also allows you to cut away any excess lights you don’t need (don’t do that with the 5M version).

Power cables and Hooks – Hopefully you know what power cables do. The hooks are used to stick to your TV so that we can run the lights around it. It’s worth noting that you are going to need 3 spare power sockets to plug everything, 1 for Raspberry Pi 3 (not included in this kit), 1 for the HDMI Grabber, and 1 for the LED controller which will also split into powering the end of the 5M LED strip.

Pre-Loaded Micro SD Card:

Fist off, let me say that you can use any Micro SD card and that I will show you how to set everything up with your own SD card later in the guide. However, for ease of use and for “Plug and Play” I suggest that you just purchase a pre-loaded Micro SD card from Lightberry. The card that they sell is 8GB and comes loaded with OpenElec which boots directly into Kodi. I shall cover OpenElec and Kodi and what they do later, but basically this is the operating system that will be plugged into the Raspberry Pi and make everything work. You must have an SD card to make this work, you cannot load any operating system directly onto the Pi without an SD Card!

HDMI Splitter/Switcher (Optional):

Whilst the Lightberry HDMI grabber will take a single HDMI input, send that to the Raspberry Pi via USB, and then pass through the HDMI source to the TV, you may need a HDMI splitter to allow you to pass multiple HDMI inputs to your setup. Let me try and explain that a different way, if you have your Sky/Cable, your Bluray, your Apple TV etc all plugged into the back of your TV then as it stands you can only choose one of those to plug into the Lightberry HDMI Grabber and have the LEDs light from that source. If you want ALL of your devices to feed through the Lightberry HDMI Grabber then you are going to have to plug them into a HDMI splitter first so that the splitter/switcher takes all those inputs and outputs them as a single source into the HDMI Grabber.

If you have a Home Theatre system or AV receiver then you do not need a HDMI splitter as you can just use the single HDMi cable output from your receiver to your TV. Just to be crystal clear, AVR’s work perfectly fine outputting all sources through a single HDMI cable into the Lightberry HDMI Grabber.

2) Setting up and connecting the Lightberry HD kit

Ok, so we have everything purchased and delivered and it’s now time to physically set everything up. One thing to note here, I am actually writing this post about a week after setting up my own setup so I didn’t get chance to properly take photos of everything. I’ll try and note everything as clear as I can though, so it should be fairly easy to work out what you are supposed to do.

The image above is a very basic representation of how all the kit goes together. If you are using an AV receiver then it would replace the [HDMI Switch] part, or if you are simply using a single input (like an Apple TV) then you may not have a HDMI switch at all. Also note that the Raspberry PI doesn’t simply just connect directly to the LED strip, it actually connects via USB to the LED controller. The HDMI Premium kit as labelled in the above image is actually the Lightberry HDMI Grabber and is connected by HDMI to the TV and USB to the Raspberry Pi.

Plugging in and connecting the Lightberry HD Kit:

I’m going to assume that you are doing a dry run of the setup and that you aren’t going to tidy everything up into it’s final position as soon as you are done. We are covering the physical setup here so you will still need access to the Raspberry Pi in order to add/remove the SD card, connect a USB keyboard, and also potentially jiggle the LED strip a little bit. Also note, don’t turn any of the power supplies on until the end of the setup.

Take everything out of the boxes right now and lay it out in front of you. For the Rasperry Pi you should hook it up to the power supply and also connect a HDMI cable from it to a port on your TV. Just to be clear, the Raspberry Pi HDMI out should go directly into the TV and NOT connect into the HDMI grabber. Unless you plan to use the Rasperry Pi as a media player (more on that later) then we’ll only be needing the Pi connected to the TV for the setup portion and it won’t be permanently connected to the TV.

Take your HDMI source and connect it into the HDMI IN port of the grabber. If your HDMI source is an AV receiver then just take that output cable and connect it into the HDMI grabber. If you are using a HDMI switch for multiple sources then hook those up and connect the output of the HDMI splitter/switcher into the input of the HDMI grabber.

Hook up the power cable of the HDMI grabber so it is ready to go, but don’t turn it on.

You should now be left with the LED light reel and an additional power supply. Go ahead and connect the power supply into the Lightberry LED controller, and note that this power supply has a splitter that turns one power output into two power outputs. Since you have just connected one power output into the LED Controller, the second power output is going to connect into the end of the LED strip, which is currently hidden in the middle of the LED reel.

Take your hooks out of the bag and prepare to get behind the TV to stick them all on it. They are going to look like this….

The above is good for a 55″ TV

Now, one thing about the hooks. I recommend you just use them as a “shelf” for the LED strip which means that all the hooks are facing downwards. The LED strip is sticky so there is almost zero chance of the strip moving outward from the “shelf” part of the hook and falling off. If you point them upwards and an LED is behind the hook part then you are going to create a shadow against the wall. Long story short, you should place the hooks face down towards the floor in my opinion.

The hooks are super sticky, if you don’t get it stuck in the right position off the bat it is a pain in the ass to get it off. Take your time in working out where you want the hooks to go. Mine are positioned about 1 inch from the outer edge of the TV, almost exactly like the diagram above. Remember, I have 55″ TV and the above worked perfectly without any dipping or drooping from the LED strip. If you are rocking a 65″ or higher set you may want to add an additional hook along the horizontal positions.

Positioning and securing the LED Strip to your TV:

After you have worked up a sweat getting all the hooks stuck on correctly, then it’s time to run the LED strip onto the hooks and around the TV, and really get the underarm juices flowing.

You can run the LED strip from almost anywhere as the configuration file that we will make later will allow us to tell it where we started, but I recommend starting from the bottom left of the TV (facing the TV) and working around clockwise. Since you are going to be behind the TV doing this, then you will be starting from the bottom right and working your way counter-clockwise.

I actually ran the strips from the bottom left (behind the TV) and ran it clockwise and had no issues at all, but was confused by the config as it’s initial positioning is calculated from facing the TV.

Facing the back of the TV you want to take the first LED on the strip and have it facing outwards to the right at the very bottom right of the TV, work your LED strip up to the top right and then along the top of the set to the top left. Run it down the left side and then along the bottom until you get back to the bottom right. If you have some spare LEDs then double the strip back over the top of the bottom LEDs with your spare LEDs facing upwards.

Remember that the LED strip has a sticky back, but you have to peel that off. I put all the LEDs in place first and then peeled of the sticky part to get it to stick to the hooks.

For the bottom row lights, I actually had them “hanging” from the underside/bottom of the hooks and then the excess lights that i didn’t need ran back across the top of them and allowed the stickiness to stick both together holding up the strip. If you just try and stick the single outward facing bottom LEDs to the underside/bottom of the hooks without the excess LED strip running back across the top, then I am almost certain that they will end up falling down.

If you want a reference, my strip ran 38 LEDs across the top and bottom horizontals and 22 LEDs up the left and right verticals. That’s on a 55″ TV remember.

Now that your strip is in place, there are two last connections we need to make. The start of the LED strip (bottom left facing the TV, bottom right behind it) should be connected to the Lightberry LED Controller. The end of the strip (where ever that may have ended up) needs to connect to the second power supply output (with the first split power supply output already having been connected to the Lightberry LED controller).

Your LED Strip should end up looking something like this

Phew, you should be entirely connected and setup now. Let’s get ready to power everything up (don’t do it yet), but first we need to get the SD card for the Raspberry Pi ready to rock.

If you purchased the pre-loaded micro SD card direct from Lightberry then you can skip this next step. Just go ahead and insert the SD card into the Raspberry Pi for now and skip to the first run section.

If you have your own SD card and you need to load OpenElec onto it so your Raspberry actually boots and becomes useful, here is how to do it…

Burning an OpenElec system image to an SD card:

Before we actually go ahead and get everything loaded on the SD card, let’s just have a quick look at what exactly OpenElec is…

OpenELEC is an embedded operating system built around Kodi, the open source entertainment media hub. Home Theatre PCs are known to be hard to install and configure, and it can take a massive amount of time to keep them running. OpenELEC, on the other hand, is designed to be as lightweight as possible in terms of size and complexity, meaning your HTPC becomes no harder to configure than your satellite box or DVD player. With its small footprint, OpenELEC is also ideal for today’s small form factor systems, so you won’t need a big desktop computer in your living room!

So basically, OpenELEC is bootable linux operating system which immediately starts into Kodi. There is no traditional computer like GUI, you simply boot it up and then you are instantly using the Kodi Software. So what is Kodi you say?

Kodi® (formerly known as XBMC™) is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media center for playing videos, music, pictures, games, and more. Kodi runs on Linux, OS X, Windows, iOS, and Android, featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most videos, music, podcasts, and other digital media files from local and network storage media and the internet.

So basically, it is a media player. What the above description doesn’t tell you though is that that you can write plugins for Kodi, and Hyperion (the software which controls the LEDs) is actually a plugin for Kodi. Don’t worry about working out the Hyperion plugin though, it is part of the system image we will download.

One further thing I will say about Kodi is that if you are currently someone who watches movies through a USB connected to your TV then you are going to want to plug that USB stick into your Raspberry Pi and use Kodi as the player. Not only will Kodi allow you to play a million more file types than your TV can, but it will actually natively send the image information to the LED strip. If you watch any content directly through the TVs USB ports then you will never be able to get the Lightberry to ‘read’ that image. Only images from the Raspberry Pi or anything connected into the HDMI grabber will be processed by Lightberry.

You want to download the latest version of the Lightberry OpenElec image, at time of writing the latest version is OpenELEC 7 beta3 for RPi2 / RPi3 – If you are coming here weeks or months after this guide was published then look for the version with the highest number, as that will be the latest.

Only download OpenElec, and make sure that you actually save the Zip file. Do not open or uncompress the Zip file.

Do not worry about downloading anything else from that page.

Next we need to download the SD card ‘burning’ software to ‘install’ the system image onto the SD card.

After Wifi has been setup, hit the Escape key on your keyboard a few times to get back to the main menu

Using the keyboard you need to navigate to [Programs] > [Add Ons] and hit enter.

Now select Hyperion Config Creator, hit enter and it should load the config system. If it asks you for an update, then ALLOW THE UPDATE.

It will first ask you to select the LED type, select the top APA102 option if you are using USB, or the bottom APA102 option is using GPIO.

Now when it asks you to select the number of LEDs, count the LEDs both horizontal and vertical and input those numbers separately.

Next up the config will ask you to download the best settings, I went with [YES] as we’ll just overwrite it during Hypercon configuration later anyway.

It will ask you where the LED strip starts, the starting position should be calculated from you facing the TV (bottom left if you followed this guide).

The config should also say that it has detected a grabber and should it use it? Obviously you should select yes. If no grabber can be found then double check you have everything connected properly!

The config should then inform you that the strip will show a rainbow, if you do NOT see the rainbow then don’t worry, we’ll fix this below. If you did see the rainbow, then…

It will show you a 4 colour image so that you can ensure the LED strip is showing the right colours. If your colours are slightly off or slightly in the wrong position then don’t worry as we will fix this during the Hyperion config part later in this guide. However, if your colours are completely off then you will need to rerun this config and 100% ensure you input the correct number of LEDs both vertically and horizontally.

Lightberry LED strip is NOT working/is black or blank/no Rainbow:

If your LED strip didn’t show the rainbow properly during configuration (as per the video above), or it keeps lighting up in completely random ways then you need to update the firmware on the Lightberry LED controller (level converter). Thankfully this is pretty simply, so go ahead and disconnect the LED controller from the LED strip and Raspberry Pi and then connect it to your PC/Mac via USB. Once you are all hooked up follow this very simple guide on the Lightberry site and update the firmware.

Once you are all updated, hook the LED Controller back up to the Raspberry Pi and LED strip and re run the hyperion configuration tool again. Everything should work this time providing you select the correct LED strip version from the Hyperion Config. If your LED strip still doesn’t light up then use trial and error to test each of the other LED options, if you still can’t get it to work after trying them all and you are 100% sure that the firmware on the LED controller update correctly then you will need to contact Lightberry Support via email.

Everything is working, what next?:

Now at this point you have a choice to make. If you want to start playing your movies from a USB stick inside Kodi then you should leave the Raspberry Pi hooked up to the TV via HDMI. However, if you don’t expect to use this setup for anything other than inputs that go through the HDMI Grabber then you can pretty much go ahead and unhook the Raspberry Pi from the TV and leave it running “Headless”.

We can, and will be using SSH to connect to the Pi in the future. As of right now you can pretty much kick back and enjoy the lightberry for what it is, but to really get the most out of it then we are going to have to configure and calibrate Hyperion to get the LED levels and timings correct, let’s do that in a second, but first I want to show you where the Hyperion configuration is saved on your Raspberry Pi.

The Hyperion Configuration File:

If you set up Wifi on your Raspberry Pi then you should already see it on your home network. On Mac/OSX you can open finder and you should have a network share called OPENELEC, on Windows you may have to find this manually but it’s super easy as you just type //openelec into the Windows Explorer bar and it will open the network share.

You can see there is a folder called Configfiles, inside this folder is a text file called hyperion.config.json – This file is where all the configuration of your LED positions, LED controller & Grabber, and Light settings amongst others are kept. You can actually go ahead and open this file through the network share to familiarise yourself with it. It will look a bit funky in Windows, but if you are using OSX then it retains the spacing and formatting. You can also search around the internet and find configuration files from other people, but you do not want to just copy and paste their file or overwrite yours because their LED numbers, positions, and other information will be completely different and you are likely just going to break your setup… and this is why we are going to use the HyperCon tool which will overwrite our file after we have calibrated everything correctly.

3) Configuring Lightberry HD and Hyperion using HyperCon Calibration

Whilst the Hyperion Kodi plugin works well for getting the Lightberry setup and working, it is very basic and it won’t correctly calibrate the colours against your wall or allow you to grab more of the picture. We are going to walk through using the HyperCon tool to do this.

What is HyperCon?:

HyperCon is a tool that is written in Java and it basically just builds a hyperion.config.json file based on the GUI settings that you set. It gives you much more ability to really make you Lightberry setup shine and is actually pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it.

Where can I download HyperCon?:

HyperCon can be downloaded for both Windows and Mac/OSX from the HyperCon Sourceforge page. Be sure that you have the latest version of Java installed before you download HyperCon and note that HyperCon is not going to be installed on your Raspberry Pi, install HyperCon on your laptop or any other computer which is on the same network as the Raspberry Pi.

Calibrating HyperCon:

So now you should have HyperCon open on your computer, and it will look like the image above. For this next section of the guide I am going to send you off to the official HyperCon setup guide as they have covered almost everything despite it being in somewhat broken English. I’d suggest you keep this guide open at the same time as there are a couple of things that are worth noting below…

In the Hardware tab, the device is the model of your LED strip. If you bought the Lighberry HD kit around the time this guide was written then the “Type” will be AdalightApa102, the “Output” will be /dev/ttyACM0, and the “RGB byte order” will beBGR – it is a decent idea for you to actually open your hyperion.config.json before you go using Hypercon so that you can a) Back it up, and b) double check that current working setup type matches what I have just typed above. If it does not, then make sure you use WHAT IS CURRENTLY WORKING FOR YOU.

A note about this tab also, for some reason despite [Save]’ing the config data if you close HyperCon then it will reset the device Type and Output each time. Be sure to select your setup again if you tweak anything after closing and reopening the program else your LEDs will not light up.

LED Direction and number should be obvious, LED offset allows you to position the first LED correctly.

Image Process commands how much of the screen will be used for colour analysis, I have mine set quite deep but you will want to play with this to get it right for your setup. Do set the Overlap to 20 though, as it will create a much smoother transition between frames.

Blackborder Detection: This detects any vertical or horizontal borders in the image, and acts a bit weird. If you are playing your movies and TV shows directly from Kodi on the Raspberry Pi then you can use a low setting here, something like 0.2 or 0.5, HOWEVER if you are watching your movies on something like an Apple TV or another computer which is sending the image through the HDMI Grabber then you are going to have to ramp this number up to something like 70 or even 80. Keep the mode on default.

I must admit, Blackborder detection is annoying me somewhat. It does work on my setup which is a Mac Mini running Plex sending the image through the HDMI Grabber, but it can take a while to kick in on frame changes leaving the LEDs off for a noticeable amount of time. If you know much about this, please shout me in the comments.

Do NOT skip colour calibration, it is a bit of a pain, and it takes a little while but it will really make your colours stand out. For the most part, my colours were about right except that I had to reduce a lot of Red in the Whitelevel.

Internal Frame grabber is for anything you run on Kodi, I just left this as is.

Grabber V4L2 is your HDMI Grabber. You can keep the width and height at -1 as it is supposed to use the max available, or you can hard lock it at 720p x 576p which is the actual resolution the HDMI grabber uses.

Video Standard is whether your are sending a NTSC or PAL video. To be fair this is a little defunct in this day of age as most people watch TV shows and movies across a wide spectrum of standards. However, to be on the safe side if you are in the UK then you want to set this to PAL, and it’s NTSC for my American or Filipino friends. Be sure that the physical switch on the HDMI Grabber matches what you put here.

Red/Green/Blue signal threshold: Set this to 0.2 for both Red and Green, and 1 for Blue. This will ensure that the LEDs are fully turned off when your HDMI source is turned off. If you leave this at 0 then i’m 99% sure you will not be able to get the LEDs to turn off when you switch everything else off.

Phew, and with that, we are done! Hopefully you will end up with something that looks similar to the YouTube video below. Keep on reading if you need to troubleshoot anything or want to see some other Hyperion Demo videos at the end. Please do let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions for this guide, or if you tweaked something to make it work better on your setup.

Once you are all updated, hook the LED Controller back up to the Raspberry Pi and LED strip and re run the hyperion configuration tool again. Everything should work this time providing you select the correct LED strip version from the Hyperion Config. If your LED strip still doesn’t light up then use trial and error to test each of the other LED options, if you still can’t get it to work after trying them all and you are 100% sure that the firmware on the LED controller update correctly then you will need to contact Lightberry Support via email.

Lightberry LED strip is NOT working/is black or blank:

In the Hardware tab of HyperCon, the device is the model of your LED strip. If you bought the Lighberry HD kit around the time this guide was written then the “Type” will be AdalightApa102, the “Output” will be /dev/ttyACM0, and the “RGB byte order” will beBGR – it is a decent idea for you to actually open your hyperion.config.json before you go using Hypercon so that you can a) Back it up, and b) double check that current working setup type matches what I have just typed above. If it does not, then make sure you use WHAT IS CURRENTLY WORKING FOR YOU.

A note about this tab also, for some reason despite [Save]’ing the config data if you closed HyperCon then it will reset the device Type and Output each time. Be sure to select your setup again if you tweak anything after closing and reopening the program.

My LEDS do not turn off/LEDs are all blue when HDMI is off:

Red/Green/Blue signal threshold: Set this to 0.2 for both Red and Green, and 1 for Blue. This will ensure that the LEDs are fully turned off when your HDMI source is turned off. If you leave this at 0 then i’m 99% sure you will not be able to get the LEDs to turn off when you switch everything else off.

LEDs wont light up when watching a movie with borders:

Blackborder Detection: This detects any vertical or horizontal borders in the image, and acts a bit weird. If you are playing your movies and TV shows directly from Kodi on the Raspberry Pi then you can use a low setting here, something like 0.2 or 0.5, HOWEVER if you are watching your movies on something like an Apple TV or another computer which is sending the image through the HDMI Grabber then you are going to have to ramp this number up to something like 70 or even 80. Keep the mode on default.

Where is the Hyperion Config file located?:

If you set up Wifi on your Raspberry Pi then you should already see it on your home network. On Mac/OSX you can open finder and you should have a network share called OPENELEC, on Windows you may have to find this manually but it’s super easy as you just type //openelec into the Windows Explorer bar and it will open the network share.

You can see there is a folder called Configfiles, inside this folder is a text file called hyperion.config.json – This file is where all the configuration of your LED positions, LED controller and Grabber, Light settings are kept.

Hey Coto, well you have two options if you are using a NAS. Option 1 (which is the easiest) is to just access the NAS share through Kodi on the Pi. The Pi will then control the LEDs through USB and you are all set.

If you want to use an embedded Plex version then check out RasPlex (http://www.rasplex.com/0.6.0-released/) which is an OpenElec flavour with embedded Plex and Hyperion support (will control the LEDs through USB like above). I haven’t tested it myself as I run Plex on my Windows 10 MacMini through my AVR which goes through the HDMI grabber.

Thank you for your answer, the problem in my opinion is in the fact that actually raspberry isn’t able or if you want enough powerful to play 4K contents, you agree with me?
Also fullHD contents have problems, the embedded fast ethernet does’nt help…
I will buy an NVIDIA Shield Tv
Just a little question, I recently purchased the 4K kit and I have a little problem: the led strip on the bottom of TV doesn’t work, it’s the only side, the other ones (left and right vertically and top horizontally) work perfectly
Any suggestion?
Thank you in advance

Hey Coto, I haven’t personally used the 4K kit so I can’t really comment on it. Ethernet using 1gbps should have enough bandwidth to work with though, so perhaps the Pi just doesn’t have enough processing power to handle a 4K image correctly, like you mentioned. As for the bottom LEDs, I had the same problem (i mentioned it in the guide) with the strip not being sticky enough but in my case I had enough extra spare LEDs to run the strip back across the top of the bottom hooks, which basically “sandwiched” the hooks between the strip. In… Read more »

Me too, I have enough extra spare leds to run the strip back, it’s possible that the problem is in the fact that on the top I have 43 leds and in the bottom 41? It’s due to the fact that I have not placed simmetrically the hooks, but I think that in this case, it will work only the 41 leds I mentioned in the initial configuration, isn’t it?
Sorry for all these questions, but I really didn’t find any complete guide or threads on the internet complete and useful like yours
Thank you!

Hey Coto, It certainly does sound like the LED positioning is incorrect in the Hyperion config and that is causing the bottom set of LEDs to not light up. I would strongly (if you haven’t already) realign the LEDs so that they are symmetrical as the system is designed to have the same number on the top and bottom, and again on the left and the right. After you have got them setup correctly, rerun the hyperion config file in Kodi and select the correct number of LEDs. If you are still seeing a couple of LEDs that are black/blank… Read more »

Glad you enjoyed the guide, thanks for stopping by. Yeah that is correct, if you are just running Kodi on the Pi then all you need is the LED Strip and the LED/level controller connected into the Pi via USB or GPIO.

– make brighter the leds (light emitted is very low), I mean when using the hyperion app on Android the light is very strong, but when I use watching movies is just visible;
– leave the light on in dark scenes (for example white)

Did you configure using Hypercon? Try using that if you have not done so already. You can also use Hypercon to output to the LEDs using the colorwheel on the SSH tab, check to see how bright they are when using that.

For the lights turning off, in hypercon select [Process tab] and make sure Threshold is set to 0,0,0 and in the [Grabber] tab set…

Hi, Chewie. Just to say that this guide has been the greatest help for me when I was installing the Lightberry. It’s the most simple and clear guide that I’ve found in internet. Thank very much!!!… great job!!!

I found here a very nice tutorial thank you for that. I have a 75 inch sony android tv and I wish to put some aura behind him 😛 so my question is that can I use Pi with hyperion and kodi installed on tv only? If yes for that I need only LED Strip and the LED controller connected into the Pi via USB only and Pi to tv trough HDMI?

Thanks for the comment. I wouldn’t look to install anything at all on the TV, you should have everything running on the PI with the only connection to the TV being via HDMI to send the actual video of what you are watching.

I highly doubt that even if you could install a custom Kodi/Hyperion PKG onto the TV that it would be able to pass the required information through it’s USB port to the LED controller.

So my advice would be to follow the guide as is for simplicity’s sake.

Afternoon,
I have bought the Lightberry HD kit, raspberry pi 3 separate and will be installing the pre-loaded SD card from Lightberry when it arrives. My first question is; do i need the HDMI grabber if only using through my PS4 and the Raspberry Pi itself? Second question is; if so, where can I find a reasonably priced one?

If you were to ONLY watch TV Shows/Movies using Kodi directly on the Raspberry Pi then you would NOT need the HDMI grabber. Since you also mentioned that you want to grab the image from the PS4 then you will 100% need a HDMI Grabber to pass that from HDMI into Hyperion on the Raspberry PI.

My apologies for the super delayed reply, did you manage to move forward with this? Are you talking about updating the firmware on the LED Controller or a step in the initial Hyperion setup? I can’t recall having to pick 1.1 or 1.1a versions, can you jog my memory and let me know how it went for you?

Thank you for this great tutorial. I have to print it and then read again and again! 🙂
One thing is not clear for me. I don’t need Kodi OpenELEC since I already have Asrock BeeBox KabyLake where I have Kodi 17 installed and connected to TV via HDMI.
So the question is, can I use the Rpi and 4k Kit with my actual media player? So, something like, connect BeeBox to the Kit via HDMI and the kit to my TV… Yes, I’m a little bit confused! 🙂

Sorry for the late reply, I hope you managed to get this sorted? If not, then although I am unfamiliar with the BeeBox you should be able to install the Hyperion Plugin manually from the Lightberry Website into your version of Kodi running on that box. Then as you mentioned, you would plug the Beebox directly into the lightberry as opposed to the TV.

Hi! Thanks for the tutorial I’m having issues I have not been able to get figured out. I have the lightberry he 4k kit, we have six years with the ST card but got that figured out and up and running, i’ve been working on this for almost 2 days straight Lol So I have it working, get the swirl at startup, it works great with the raspberry imputed in my tv. When I switch to the grabber it won’t switch, I can get screen grabs but no light, I’ve lowered (and raised for the hell of it) the priority,… Read more »

This does indeed sound like a noodle scratcher. I think you need to 100% make sure that the 4K signal is coming through at 30fps or lower, because whilst the grabber will pass it through to the TV, i don’t think it’ll correctly process a 4k signal if it is anything above 30fps 4:2:2 colour space.

Hello Chewie! Great post and very helpful! (much more than the web page). I have a problem though. I have OSMC latest version (17), not downloaded from the lightberry web page. I downloaded Hyperion Configurator and Lightberry Config Downloader from github. Hyperion Configurator shows an error: “Hyperion installation was not detected. Please install manually” Lightberry Config seems to work fine, Can you help me? Unless absolutely necessary I’d prefer not to change from OSMC to another version (openelec…), as I have everything all the grabers and media configured. If I had to change the OS, is there a way to… Read more »

You’re not gonna like this answer, but it’s an answer nonetheless. I never managed to get the lightberry working with an OSMC image and I am wondering if it is even possible without good knowledge of how it handles plugins and what not. If you have a spare SD Card, it’d be worth installing Openelec on it just so you can test if a vanilla open elec setup works correctly with your kit.

I have the light berry HD Kit plus HDMI grabber and PI with pre-configured SD card. After setting up as described Kodi started. So far so good. But I miss the Hyperion Add-on to configure the LED stripes. Is there any easy solution?

Hi, I have Raspi wiht OpenELECT 6.0.0 & lightberry (device adalightpa102 and grabber-v412) All leds works without problem but when I put the home cinema to conect my Ps4, PC or satellite, I can see the image, lisent the sound but the signal of lightberry if black (no lights). I trioed to change the Priority, but the result is the same… Any one can help me? “device”: { “colorOrder”: “bgr”, “rate”: 500000, “type”: “adalightapa102”, “name”: “MyPi”, “output”: “/dev/ttyACM0” }, “xbmcVideoChecker”: { “grabVideo”: true, “grabPictures”: true, “xbmcTcpPort”: 9090, “grabAudio”: true, “grabMenu”: false, “enable3DDetection”: true, “xbmcAddress”: “127.0.0.1”, “grabScreensaver”: true }, “jsonServer”: {… Read more »

Hey Oscar, have you tried manually controlling the LEDS in Hyperion? Also, when you say you can see the image, do you mean on screen as it is passed through, or can you see the image in Hyperion’s image grabber software? You will need to check the latter to make sure the grabber is correctly processing the image.

Hey Chewie, Thanks for taking the time to write this guide. I don’t have Lightberry yet, because I’m still doing a bit of research to find out if it’s what I’m looking for, but there was some information here that I couldn’t find anywhere else which is really appreciated. I was wondering if you could maybe give some information on a somewhat more complicated setup. I’m going to try to explain, hopefully without making it confusing Would this work across a TV and a PC Monitor at the same time? Also, can I customise each LED to a specific colour… Read more »

Hi Gareth, I am glad that you liked the post, and I am going to try and answer your question but I think what you are asking is going to be a lot more complicated than what the Lightberry is designed to do. First off, dual screens. I am not 100% sure i follow your explanation but it sounds like you are saying you will have a TV and a Monitor set up next to each other with the LEDS running around them both as a whole. Let’s try and break this up into two parts, first the input… You… Read more »

Hey Chewie, Thanks for the taking the time to write this guide! I was wondering if you could help with a little more info. Can I configure each LED individually so that I can make custom scenes (similar to what the Philips Hue does), and also, can I make half of the LEDs match what’s on my TV screen, while having the rest of the LEDs a solid colour? (This is because I want to have a white light shining on my consoles, while still having the LEDs behind my TV matching what’s on the screen) Thanks for your help!… Read more »

If you wanted to have a sub-set of lights a fixed colour and then have the others show what is coming from the grabber then I feel like this is technically doable, it should just be a case of setting the hyperion.config.json to have a certain set of LEDs as “Always On” with the rest being changed as per the info the grabber sends. Whilst in theory this should be possible i haven’t tested it and there could be something I am missing.

hey there, i have a problem. when i connect hdmi splitter, tv resolution goes down from 1080p to 576p and i cant change it. is this problem familiar to others, are there any solutions? with this resolution my 65″ tv is totally useless. please help

Hey chewie solid guide I used lightBerry but took it down when I redecorated (the picture at the start with the coloured lines was my set up) just about to redo it an found this guide it’s just what I needed to reacquaint myself with the set up… Bravo on a thorough guide

Hey Chewie thx for the guide, I still have a couple of questions. I have the Lightberry XL. When I turn the RasPi on the leds are working normal, but when I’m in the menu they turn off after a couple of seconds and before they did not. When I connect my HDMI grabber. AVR to HDMI in, HDMI out to Beamer. When I use the channel where the RasPi is connected I get proper Image and led colors during video. But when I switch to CABLE Box or PC, I see a flash of the screen for about 2… Read more »

It sounds like the AVR could be causing some issues so I would remove that from the chain to see how things work out. Try connecting the PC straight into the RasPi bypassing the AVR and then see if you have the issues with the lights going off. It doesn’t sound like the issue is in the lightberry hardware chain, perhaps it could be hyperion software but i’d eliminate the AVR first.

How did you manage to update the “Lightberry LED controller” through the arduino software with the lack of a reset button on lighberry’s arduino clone? I keep getting errors claiming the device is no longer in the COM port it was as soon as I try to update it.

How did you manage to update the “Lightberry LED controller” through the arduino software with the lack of a reset button on lighberry’s arduino clone? I keep getting errors claiming the device is no longer in the COM port it was as soon as I try to update it.

Hey there chewie recently I brought a new TV and so I had to re set up my lightberry kit I have the 4k kit with the Hdmi screen grabber and a HD fury for stripping the hdcp protection as I use it with my Xbox one x. Previously I had xbox one s and also a 4k TV, but since re settings up and changing the number of lights in the hyperion config creator I am now getting a strobe effect everytime I watch a video with a few frames of white for example. If it’s half white half… Read more »

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Chewie

Hailing from a mysterious part of the United Kingdom called Up Norf. Dean (as his mother knows him) has been working in web development and SEO for over 12 years, beginning as a developer and moving to SEO in search of the perfect rank. As well as SEO he likes football, beer, girls, and gravy - often at the same time.